[ANALYTICS OUTSOURCING] Analytics Outsourcing: Gaining Ground

The offshore analytics space has evolved from being dominated by captives of large companies to embracing large vendors offering end-to-end specialized analytics solutions to specific verticals.

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Top Delivery Locations

India, China and Eastern Europe are the most prominent destinations on the analytics outsourcing map. Others include nearshore countries to the US such as Mexico and Costa Rica, and offshore destinations such as Singapore and Sri Lanka.

India's workforce embraces good communication skills and strong quantitative skills thus making it a preferred destination. There is immense talent availability in China and quantitative skills are also high in this location.

Eastern Europe and nearshoredestinationsto the US have time zone advantages. For buyers whose service requirements call for real-time and frequent client interactions, these destinations fit the bill perfectly.

Corine Van Erkom Schurink, analytics team lead at Prescient Business Technologies (PBT), a South African service provider said, “Unfortunately, advanced analytics has not had the impact it should in the local market due to various reasons, the most pertinent being that it is not understood and therefore not implemented correctly.”

Continued Van Erkom Schurink, “With this in mind, it is important for businesses to get the process of advanced analytics right for the technology to effectively benefit the business. Too often local businesses and CIOs have been let down by this concept due to the fact that they do not fully understand what it is and how it should be implemented. This needs to change and PBT is becoming a strong advocate in this regard.”

PBT suggested that getting this right involves a top-to-bottom approach:

Advanced analytics should not be looked at as an IT function solely, but rather should be driven by the business as a whole, to allow for the correct platforms to be developed, based on the identified business model and what the business needs to achieve from having access to such data.

The business should have a solid BI process in place whereby the data warehouse is fully up and running, and offers a central representation of data that can be understood on all levels of the business.